Garden Update

Garden Update: I hope you guys don’t mind that I’ve been a little garden-obsessed lately. It’s just something about the increasing sunlight and warm weather, not to mention that my usual obsessions – knitting and running – have been off the boil for a while. Anyway, on Tuesday morning I put down mulch on all four beds. On two of them I used lucerne, and on the other two I tried out something new: dried coffee parchment. This is the papery membrane that surrounds the coffee cherries, and Michael was given bags of it from one of the local coffee roasters. So we’re trying it out. Thursday we noticed tiny green specks in the square where we scattered rocket seed. Our first sprouting! Friday I spotted some slug trails on top of the mulch, so I put down Blitzem pellets. This morning I was gratified to find three slugs in their death throes (which I promptly squished on the pavement). Our cauliflower seeds have also sprouted! It’s all happening. I took some macro pics to document the fecundity. (Some people post pictures of their kids. I post pictures of my garden.)

Rocket seedlings after three days.Cauliflower seedlings, just poking their heads up today. (The weird green stuff is the slug bait.)

My snow peas are starting to look a bit more vigorous.

Jalapeno and tomatoes, enjoying the sun.

Sweet corn. If I manage to get actual edible corn off this, no one will be more surprised than me.

I checked again this afternoon, and one of the broccoli is coming up! It’s changing by the hour out there, I swear.

These slug pellets are supposed to have a bittering agent that animals dislike. Our cats don’t go outside, and I haven’t seen any ferals around lately. (We used the same pellets last year without any trouble.) Hopefully we’ll be okay!

Looking fabulous! What are you going to use for supports for the snow peas? And I heard last weekend that very diluted milk is good for powdery mildew that they are very prone too – you’ll know if you’ve got it when the leaves start going a powdery white colour.

We’ve planted all the tall stuff along the two back walls, and we’re going to build some vertical supports and hopefully string some nylon netting between them. Then the snow peas, broad beans, tomatoes, and pumpkins can go up up up! 🙂

BJ

What are you doing killing snails?!
Instead of poisoning them catch them and eat them. Feed them on rolled oats and powdered milk to fatten them up then purge them and yummo!
Put beer out to catch the slugs and then you can squish them!!

If you can find a source, then wood ash is a good alternative to slug pellets and beer. Slugs and snails won’t crawl across it. It’s also good as a soil additive. We used to use it all the time when I was growing up– of course, we had a wood burning stove for a steady supply.